


Doubts Don't Deter Detectives III

by amindamazed (hophophop)



Series: Doubts Don't Deter Detectives [3]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mental Health Issues, Reichenbach variation, mention of drug use (past), mention of relapse, minor character death (past), spoilers through s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:12:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 39
Words: 16,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4034770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/amindamazed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"That escalated quickly."</em><br/>2015 Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts in the Elementary universe</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Always Falling (pp #2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: What did it mean that her metaphors seemed to be drawn from an amusement park?  
> [practice prompt 2](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1261699.html); I chose [7 July 2011: Falling](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/563968.html)

The clock radio blared Joan awake, and she rolled away, willing the day not to begin. Every time she told herself not to book back-to-back clients, take a week off to get reacquainted with her things before the next subletter moved in, and every time as the end of a contract loomed the thought of spending days alone with her regrets and guilt pushed her to to take the first long assignment that came her way. She sighed and pushed up to sit, stretching her legs out straight and flexing her ankles. At least she had time to get to the park for a run this morning and have a leisurely breakfast afterwards; she didn't have to be at the rehab facility to meet this Sherlock Holmes until noon.

*

He was going to get an awful crick in his neck asleep like that with his head lolling back on the seat of the chair. If he didn't shift himself in the next twenty minutes, maybe she'd take the risk of waking him to adjust his position to one more likely to let him rest. After two weeks it was obvious he was more comfortable on the floor than the average adults she knew, but then he was an outlier in a lot of ways. He'd pontificated multiple times about the inefficiency and detriment to the spine and metabolism of always sitting on chairs. After the second time she pointed out she was well aware of the medical research in this area he began referencing work published in the last two years. She bit her tongue and resorted to eye-rolling for her own wellbeing and let him drone on until something else caught his attention. Which it always did.

*

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of watch bounced lightly in the file box she carried, and she'd admit to no one that she might have strutted a bit those last few blocks to the station. It was like a pinball game, the shiny ball of their attention ricocheting off one set of clues to slam into the next, all the points of contact connected but in ways she never would have predicted at the start. And Sherlock didn't predict them either, not all of them, but she could understand how keeping all the plates spinning helped him avoid the pitfalls of recovery. (What did it mean that her metaphors seemed to be drawn from an amusement park? Roller coaster and juggling came to mind as well. No doubt Candace would have something to say about that.)

The ride was coming to an end, in any case. This last week there'd been fewer complaints and possibly fewer trance states during meetings, and he never complained about working with Alfredo. Might just be the latest security devices that were the only things he ever shared with her about those sessions. But actually it was time, that moment toward the end of her stay when the client made it through the fear and found some confidence in the process and in themselves. Time for them to continue on without her. She'd admit to no one that she wasn't exactly looking forward to that, this time.

*

And this is what happened when all the plates drop. The captain said he'd send a car for her after she called to tell him Sherlock had gone after M. Fifteen minutes, he'd said, and it had been eight so far, and she kept wandering around in circles, staring at the wall covered with evidence and conjecture and theories, staring at the various hiding places Sherlock had casually revealed as he assembled the tools he took in that bag she never wanted to see again, staring at the locks he'd picked and picked and picked that first week. Rebuilding the dexterity in his hands; all the better to murder someone. Apparently. "And now I know it was a woman," she'd said six weeks ago, as arrogant as he ever was in her own assessment of the struggling man trying so hard to recreate the self-control he'd leached away with needles and pills. Somewhere in the distraction of recovering priceless artworks and uncovering Russian spies, she'd missed the point when she lost track of what it was she was here to do.

*

Exhilaration. That's what this feeling was. She couldn't stop grinning as she almost skipped down the street, returning home after the dry cleaners demanded their lawyers and Marcus (could she call him that?) thanked her for the tip but not for leaving him with the official paperwork, which she wasn't allowed to process anyway. He smiled when he said good night, and she almost offered to buy him a beer but suddenly felt shy about that. Wouldn't want to give him the wrong idea, and it would be horribly embarrassing to find out that she was the only one who imagined herself a colleague and not some over-eager meddler who watched too much Columbo as a kid. There would be other opportunities, though, always more crime to solve, and she was too happy about the way it all ended to worry. She thought Sherlock would be pleased with her accomplishment, although he'd probably expected her to figure it out the first time he sent her there. Chemical sensitivities, the jackass. She laughed out loud and took the front steps two at a time. She couldn't wait to tell him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 
>     title from Laurie Anderson, Walking & Falling
>     I wanted you. And I was looking for you.
>     But I couldn't find you.
>     I wanted you. And I was looking for you all day.
>     But I couldn't find you. I couldn't find you.
>     
>     You're walking. And you don't always realize it,
>     but you're always falling.
>     With each step you fall forward slightly.
>     And then catch yourself from falling.
>     Over and over, you're falling.
>     And then catching yourself from falling.
>     And this is how you can be walking and falling
>     at the same time.


	2. Accounting (jwp 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> summary: It’ll take forever to count all those particles.  
> 01 july prompt: [tempting fate](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1270707.html).  
> warning: implied character death

“It’s a useful practical opportunity to estimate quantity given known parameters of volume and average density…” Sherlock lectured on about the construction materials inside the half-renovated apartment building, and while Joan was tempted to hang up on him, she merely set the phone down on the passenger seat, where his voice receded to an incoherent buzz. 

It had been a long day, the tedium of the stake-out and eventual confirmation that the suspects were not coming back prompting him to slip into the site to check for corroborating evidence. She’d started to go with him, thinking movement would help chase the sluggishness out of her brain, but he stopped her, saying they needed a look-out for the cousin, just in case. Part of her was annoyed at being left behind, but mostly she was ready, so ready, for a nap.

A sharp pop from the phone startled her awake, followed by an ignition flash in the building ahead.

In real time, her mind reflexively calculated it to be an actual ton of bricks that blew through the side of the building half a block a way, like the blast was an exercise from Sherlock as admonishment for ignoring him earlier. The ground shook from the impact and “NO!” exploded out of her. She scrambled for the phone, yelling “Sherlock!” but the connection was gone.

A dozen car alarms blared, yellow and orange warning lights blinking too late through the haze of dust filling the site. She couldn’t see anything else. She couldn’t move. She couldn't think. It’ll take forever to count all those particles. She’d better get started.


	3. Unreliable Narrator (jwp 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As sure as she was of what she’d seen, she’d rather be wrong about that.  
> 02 july prompt: [yellow](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1276073.html).  
> 

Mary frowned listening to Sherlock argue his case over the phone. She could recall the scarf so vividly, how the silk had caught gently on her winter-roughened fingertips, thick enough to drape rather than float over the shoulder. Paisley usually made her turn the other way, but the rich colors in this fabric trumped the pattern, dark greens and purples reminding her of the shadows inside one of those enormous Victorian botanical-garden greenhouses, accented by the most remarkable flecks of deep yellow, like pollen glimpsed within tropical flowers. Or maybe it was a visit to one of those places that was confusing her. They’d gone to one during her visit with Oren and Gabrielle, before it all went sour. She had pictures to prove it.

No. She was certain the scarf was real; she could look up the credit card statement. Sherlock, however; he was unreliable. Not to a fault, perhaps; they seemed to have patched things up to Joan’s satisfaction after the falling-out last year. And every time she’d checked in during those terrible days following Andrew’s death, there had been ample evidence in the freezer and sink of his effort to look after her. Sherlock might be impatient and arrogant enough to manipulate others for expediency, but he cared for her daughter. If he was trying to trick her into believing she needed to see a neurologist, it was because Joan was so concerned he couldn’t stand not interfering to fix it for her. 

Besides, it wasn’t like she _wanted_ Oren to follow in her husband’s footsteps. The image of the woman’s pale blond hair intruded again, and she exhaled impatiently. As sure as she was of what she’d seen, she’d rather be wrong about that.

“Yes, all right, Sherlock. I’ll speak to your doctor.”


	4. Momento Mori (jwp 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is death if not the loss of everything known and loved?  
> 03 july prompt: [picture prompt](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1282916.html) [a decaying leaf cut-out to make an image of a skull]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set in the Elementary/Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century fusion universe created by [sanguinity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity). In short, Joan never made it back from being kidnapped by Le Milieu, intercepted by villains unknown. Sherlock searched for the rest of his life and never found her. Jump forward to 2198, when Sherlock was reanimated/rejuvenated by Gareth Lestrade's great-granddaughter to catch a Moriarty clone and finally discovers that Joan had been in suspended animation all that time. He frees her and then has to tell her what's happened. It hits her hard. _Please_ read [Persistence of Memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1878486) if you haven't already.

My Dear Watson,

Handwriting is even more a lost art in this century than it was in our own, so I hope you will indulge me in accepting this letter. I’ve not had anyone with whom I could correspond ~~since, well, not~~ for many many years. Which is not to suggest you are under any obligation to reply in kind, or at all. I do not labour under that misconception. It may be that you will never open the envelope, that these words will go unread. It is nonetheless a joy to me to be able to address them to you, such a profound and selfish joy, Watson, that you are here to receive these words and read them, hate them, ignore them, or tear the pages carrying them into shreds, as you see fit.

The excuse for this letter, and I will be honest with you and myself, I am shameless in the exercise of finding reason to maintain contact, is to accompany your original prescription reading glasses which I will send to the hotel to replace the generic pair ~~John~~ acquired with your clothes. I had saved your glasses, after… I didn’t get rid of any of your things in the aftermath; it’s not like there wasn’t room in the brownstone for what little you kept there. Some time later I consolidated your belongings and packed them up. And eventually — after your mother died, if memory serves — I sorted, selected some keepsakes, and let the rest go. Your reading glasses; your red sweater (although only a swatch survived the ensuing 150 years in a damp basement, a fragile lace of fibres reminiscent of a decayed leaf), the mug you preferred for your tea. A bit of honeycomb. And every letter I wrote to you in the decades that followed.

I wrote the first letter five years after you disappeared. It was a bad time, one last strong lead that collapsed into nothing, and most everyone else was trying to move on: I was no longer in close contact with your family, but your friends. Our friends. They had their needs, and I had mine. I’m ashamed to say it was Moriarty who suggested writing it, though of course she was taunting me. She did enjoy pressing hard on the bruise of my grief.

I never told her I actually took her advice, I swear to you. No one knew about the letters, and no one else knows now: when I collected them, they’d not been disturbed since I stored the box in the basement before I died. The paper has held up well, should you ever care to read them. I won’t ask you to. But if you ever want them, they are, by rights, yours.

The brownstone itself was razed for new flats a century ago, but the basement was merely sealed off, by happy circumstance. It was easy enough to breach and the contents a welcome resource following my resurrection, given the state of my memory those final years. I can’t recall now whether it was paranoia or a last clear window, but before I died, I managed to set many of my affairs in order, arranged in fireproof filing cabinets there. Lestrade facilitated scanning the print and digital records; that box was the only object that came back with me to New London. It’s served me well as a _momento mori_ of sorts: in light of my own impermanent demise, what is death if not the loss of everything known and loved? As you well know.

And with that, this letter shall go into that box with the others, having trespassed far beyond the terms of separation you set when you departed Baker Street yesterday. The glasses need no introduction, after all, and can be sent to your hotel without comment. Perhaps I’ll try writing again in a week or two when my zeal has had time to temper. Perhaps you’ll write me. Dare I hope for a text? Oh, what I would have given in those forty years… And now, at last, it is possible. Even if you never choose to speak to me again, to know that you _could_ …

~~Oh Watson~~


	5. Postcard from the Edge (jwp 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten more days.  
> 04 july prompt: [Well-Travelled Watson](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1288940.html)

Dear Sherlock,  
Day four and I haven’t killed any of my family yet. Met your contact from the Polícia Marítima in Cascais today; he’s got the extradition order you stopped framed on his office wall. He’s ready and willing to return the favor anytime, he says. Is that offer good everywhere in the EU, you think? I might need it before the end. Brothers. You know.

Leonora says you’re putting stuff in my room. Don’t put stuff in my room. Also don’t take anything out of my room except that stuff you just put in there. 

Ten more days,  
Joan


	6. The Empty Page (jwp 5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joan's laptop screen went black from inactivity.  
> 05 july prompt: [Note to self](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1295080.html)
> 
> [early stages of exploring a possible Reichenbach variation with some of this year's prompts.]

Joan stared at the cursor. Remembered the times in college when she’d spend ten minutes playing with the word processor settings to change font colors and typefaces, hoping to find the combination that would transform desperation into inspiration. Hit the return key three times. Divided the largest of the five pieces she’d already made from the scone into three more. Licked a crumb off a finger: too sweet. Hit the delete key three times. Typed a letter. In this font, the capital I looked like an unblinking cursor. Maybe that would be better. How do you turn off the blink? It’s like somebody impatiently tapping their shoes. Hurry up, fill the space, get on with your life, no time for this nonsense.

She hit delete again, squirmed in the chair. Thought about getting more tea. Stared out the kitchen window. The laptop screen went black from inactivity. Maybe it would be easier with pen and paper. Sherlock was always going on about the—

Forget tea; she needed coffee. Something stronger to shake her brain into action. She looked up across the room; one of the interior room’s doors was still latched, the other ajar. It was dark inside, but she could just make out the pile of his laundry half-fallen off the low table. Something should be done about that.

She snapped the laptop shut and stood up; her stomach quailed at the thought of more caffeine. She could just try again later in the day. Maybe afternoon would be better. Or night. She swayed a bit, indecisive. The silent weight above pressed down. She hunched her shoulders against it and turned to the basement door. The hinges squealed, never quite the same once the nails were removed. She’d joked to Alfredo it was her office alarm system when he offered to fix it. She didn’t bother turning on the light as she made her way down.


	7. A Terrible Aspect (jwp 6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watson got angry at him all the time, but this was something else entirely.  
> 06 july prompt: [Quotation Prompt.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1300975.html) "Imitate the actions of a [sic] tiger." --Shakespeare, Henry V
> 
> continuing to play with a Reichenbach variation. This installment is even more drafty than the last one. Other parts in this set: [01july](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4034770/chapters/9073597), [05july](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4034770/chapters/9702105).

“That was Moriarty _not_ trying to kill you.”

Watson got angry at him all the time, but this was something else entirely. A less discerning observer might say her eyes were expressionless but he saw a cold rage there, a hardness. A line of jingoist verse memorized for school came to mind. This was Watson without forgiveness. Watson at war. He steeled his own spine not to quail from her and the fear that Moriarty might have succeeded in separating them irrevocably anyway.

“I’ve told you before, that’s not what she wants. _You’re_ the one who insists she’ll never change. She doesn’t want me dead. But she’d become tired of being ignored.”

“Writing dozens of letters to her is ignoring her?”

“Ignoring her work. It’s as important to her as ours is to us. She might not want me to disrupt her plans, but she expects me to care. To try.”

“To try and fail, so she can crow over you and inflate that ego just a little bit more.”

“Just so. The detonation was a punishment, something of her doing I wouldn’t let lie.” And also a test, but he didn’t want to point that out to Watson, not yet. Not now that it was irrelevant.

“She wanted to hurt you, but not by blowing you up. Or not _just_ by blowing you up, but by forcing you to fake your death. To me. Indefinitely.”

“Yah.” A little cloud of dust drifted off the crown of his head when he gave a sharp nod with the affirmative.

“To make you hurt me the way she hurt you.” She considered the idea. “It’s certainly grandiose enough,” she muttered. And it would have worked, at least on this end. Those 18 hours before he got word to her… Let’s just say she was glad there was such a thing as shock. The first wave of horrified numbness hadn’t worn off when she warily ventured into the alley behind the brownstone after Teddy contacted her. Then the figure in the shadows stepped forward and it was him, and she’d just stood there dumbfounded, wondering idly if she was clinically delusional or merely hallucinating.

“So. How long did you know?”

“What?” He was attempting to remove his jacket without scattering debris all over the kitchen, and she wanted to reach over and yank it off. He was pretending he didn’t know exactly what she was asking, and she wanted to hit something. She wanted to scream.

“How long. Before the explosion. Did you know she was going to try something like this.” She took a steadying breath in and released it slowly. He still had his head down, meticulously folding and refolding the jacket inside out. Crumbs of masonry created a halo around his feet. “How long were you hiding this from me?”

He clenched the folded square for a moment and then suddenly threw it at the doors to his room. “We don’t have time for this, Watson. We need to determine our next course of action. You will need to perform to the highest stand—“

“How. Long.” 

He sighed impatiently. “One week. I ascertained her plan a week before the bomb. But I didn’t know when or where it would occur, Watson. There was little I could hide from you beyond noting that Moriarty was scheming against us once more. It could have been anywhere, any time. I could have been with you. Of course killing you outright would achieve her main goal, but too quickly, so it wouldn’t have been her first choice just yet. She had a plan B in case things didn’t adhere to the script: you were to be posthumously exposed as an addict and fraud, with a fake medical degree and license, and I would throw my life away in the futile attempt to expose these lies.” He braced himself to make eye contact. She stared back, and he saw her there, the Watson who knew him and expected the worst and too often got it. And stayed. His breath shook a little. 

She shook her head and stepped back to pull out a chair and dropped into it. “All right, then, so what’s her plan now? She knows I’m not dead, but you think she thinks you are. What next?”

“We have to convince her.”

“That you’re dead.” She put her elbows on the kitchen table and dropped her face in both hands.


	8. Condolences (jwp 7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is not how I wanted things to be resolved between me and Sherlock.  
> 07 july prompt: [Unwanted Attention](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1307203.html).
> 
> Reichenbach variation continues.

Dear Joan,  
I feel I must address you so, for surely you are “Watson” no longer. 

This is not how I wanted things to be resolved between me and Sherlock. I would encourage you to find succour in my organization, but I don’t believe either of us would welcome such accommodation. If I may alternatively discourage you from an unnecessary and fruitless attempt at retaliation, know that you have no chance of reaching me. And certainly not now, in your bereft state. 

I too grieve this loss, in ways you could never understand. It is a hollow victory, to find myself free from the petty needling Sherlock managed with you in tow. I half-expect to find him lurking in the shadows one day, hoping to jump out with a little “Boo!” and catch me off-guard. No doubt you, too, experience these flashes of wishful thinking in that dilapidated barn you two called home.

You will not be surprised to learn that Mr. Holmes, Sr., has plans to liquidate his American holdings, now that he has lost not one but two of his heirs to those treacherous shores. I found his prices quite reasonable, and should you prefer to stay on, I can offer you rather favourable terms to let, considering the market. If you choose otherwise, you may accept this document as two weeks’ notice of your eviction.

You have been an unexpected and intriguing element in my game with Sherlock, Joan Watson, and under happier circumstances, I should have enjoyed your participation very much. It seems unlikely now that you will rise to my attention again. It would be in your best interests if you do not.

With deepest sympathy,  
Jamie Moriarty


	9. Sheltering Sky (jwp 8)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Review of the facts at hand: he’s hiding underground and off the grid, playing dead.  
> 08 july prompt: [Poem prompt](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1314328.html)
> 
> Reichenbach variation continues.

Calisthenics done, method of loci exercises complete, basic sustenance consumed. He stands in the centre of his chosen haven and tries not to feel like he’s in prison. It’s another three hours until the secure internet connection Everyone set up will be activated again, eighty-six minutes this time. Fluctuating connection duration at randomly determined times of day, multiply encrypted and proxied, and even then, he can’t be sure Moriarty won’t spot him. Although she commands a centralized network, she must have her spies among the anarchists. He would, in her place. Unfortunately, his instincts and conclusions are as much liability as asset when Moriarty’s so often follow similar lines. 

But he has Watson, which is why they will prevail. 

Review of the facts at hand: he’s hiding underground and off the grid, playing dead, while Moriarty’s web remains hyper-vigilant for the faintest tremor along any of its many tendrils, a puff of wind blowing in the wrong direction that will set off the alarm to his false demise. And Watson as decoy and cover and, despite his strongest wishes it were not so, their best and only hope to crush the spider, at risk of her own life while he moulders, useless.

He has excellent night vision and minimal vulnerability to claustrophobia, but when he dwells too long on the dangers at every turn, the dim concrete cavern darkens, its walls pressing down despair. Two hours and forty-three minutes until he can go online. Until he can be in contact, find out what’s happened, contribute something to prevent disaster. In the mean time: twenty-three steps from one corner to the next; seventeen steps across. Twenty-five circuits to a mile, give or take. At the meticulous pace of walking meditation, it can take an hour. Better than self-hypnosis for managing the anxiety.

When this is over, he’s going to sleep outside for a week. Up on the roof, he’ll arrange a pallet next to the bees. Maybe a month. Perhaps for the whole summer. He smirks to himself: The silver lining is that it could be a permanent arrangement, if he ends up actually dead and buried. Watson would no doubt disapprove of his macabre humour. Or worse, she might join in and scoff at her own chances of surviving this…engagement with Moriarty. His skin itches at the thought of her working alone. A double-standard and just-desserts, yes, all right, but it’s his skin hiding in the shadows, and it would be presumptuous of him to speculate on what her skin feels. 

He clears his throat, grateful he can make as much noise as he likes down here in his ad-hoc tomb. The deafening drone of the transformer station allows him auditory freedom, at least. And in one corner the refuge grants him a glimpse, through the thick steel mesh above, of a bit of the sky that’s all that shelters his partner.


	10. Sacrifice (jwp 9)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she has almost killed  
> 09 july prompt: [Healer's Choice](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1320752.html): One person Watson chose not to save.
> 
> It was immediately clear to me what part of the Reichenbach variation this prompt speaks to, but I'm not ready to write that part of the narrative yet, so you get intentionally ambiguous haiku instead. Influenced in part by Sappho's [[It’s no use]](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245754)
> 
> (with Joan's particular Watson story there are so many ways to take this prompt and I kind of want to do a series of them. a series of fills, that is. not (necessarily) all in verse.)
    
    
    it’s no use she can’t
    stay her hand her pain her blood
    she has almost killed
    
    seven seconds pass
    bright and dark mix in the pulse
    pulse pulse of her heart
    
    she waits holding her
    soft breath her work unfinished
    stained by blame and love
    
    from this she will not
    recover Watson thinks and
    plunges them both down
    
    turns out there’s two there
    at the edge where cold water
    drowns out the last word
    


	11. Professional Development (jwp 10)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey!” The two of them gave him identical irritated looks, and Marcus almost laughed.  
> 10 july prompt: [What’s All This Then?](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1327829.html) Use the POV of one or more of the police for today's entry.

The noise continued to rise as the consultants shifted from discussing the case to bickering over whose method of organizing the facts was more logical. Or something. Marcus could feel the glances around him, but it wasn’t until he saw the captain look up in irritation to grimace at the racket coming from the conference room that he gave up and accepted his lot.

“Oh,” Marcus said when he entered the conference room to find the floor strewn with torn paper, shredded cardboard, strips of bubble wrap, and crumpled balls of packing tape. Holmes lay under the table at the epicenter of the mess, while Joan sat cross-legged on a chair in the far corner. Her elbow was propped on her knee with her hand held up to shield her eyes from the wreckage. An empty used trash bag was the only thing on the table.

“Well spotted, although I believe the official name is ‘O Magazine’ and our victim is quite clearly obsessed with Ms Winfrey, despite her admirable attempts to conceal her compulsive behavior. The victim, that is.” Holmes folded his hands across his ribs

Marcus ducked his head to see Holmes. “Why are you under—?” He started to squat down before abruptly standing up again. “Wait, no. Would you just come out from there? This is ridiculous.”

Holmes gave an aggrieved sigh and made his way to stand next to the table, popping some bubble wrap under his feet in the process. On purpose, Marcus assumed, but the pops stopped once he was upright.

“What, so you’ll get up if _he_ says so?” Joan tossed the folder she’d been reviewing onto the chair next to her with enough force that the pages slipped out onto the floor. She rolled her eyes but made no move to pick them up. Marcus had a sudden recollection of his mother scolding him and Andre to get their toys out of the kitchen.

“He has jurisdiction over this space, Watson. You don’t. Besides, I was still ruminating on the data when you started on about professional behaviour. We are here to consult and to provide results. Prone, supine, upright or upside-down, the point is not how those results are delivered but that they are.”

“And if we still hadn’t worked it out when you emptied her trash bag, dumped it on the floor, and then crawled under there, I might say you have a point—”

“—No, You’re jumping to conclusions; that wasn’t the case under consideration—”

Their volume began to increase again as they forgot they had an audience.

“Hey!” The two of them gave him identical irritated looks, and Marcus almost laughed. “You’re about to be thrown out of here. You want to turn down the volume? Or better yet take this—“ and he waved both hands at the mess "—somewhere else? Live to see another day. Besides, there’s a meeting scheduled in here in 30 minutes. You’ve been here for hours; you could probably use a break, right?” And the rest of us could definitely use one, he thought. Holmes suddenly squinted at him, suspicious, as if he’d said that out loud.

Joan stepped forward, picking up her folder with one hand and nudging some cardboard bits toward the center of her room with her foot. “Yes, thanks. I mean, sorry. We’ll get out of here.” She stared intently at Holmes, who took a couple of heaving breaths like his lungs were being pumped by a bellows. “We’re going, Sherlock.”

“Fine.” He gave the trash bag a theatrical shake and began stuffing paper into it. 

“Okay then.” Marcus nodded to them and pushed the conference room door all the way open, earning another narrowed glance from Holmes until Joan pulled the bag out of his hands and gestured for him to pick up the scraps while she held it. Marcus shook his head with a half smile and returned to his desk pondering how to ask for a raise commensurate with his increasing (if unofficial) supervisory responsibilities.


	12. The Poorer For It (jwp 11)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"...he'll migrate out of your life, and you'll be the poorer for it."_
> 
> Sherlock lost his equilibrium the day Ian emailed them an invitation to a fundraiser for a grant in Alistair’s honor to fund new plays at his former theatre company.  
> 11 july prompt: [Coat Porn](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1334519.html)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I learned Roger Rees died a few hours after seeing the prompt, so this is in memory of his Alistair Moore. I drew heavily on [backstory](http://beanarie.tumblr.com/post/82595345241/alistair-getting-an-effusive-letter-from-a-verbose) by beanarie, in particular that Sherlock went to see Alistair in _Waiting for Godot_ when he was a kid and was thrilled that Alistair remembered the letter Sherlock had written him a few years before. I also built from language-escapes [for each who begins to weep](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1453600), in which Joan and Alistair met monthly for tea, and she knew he loved tulips.

Two months after dragging himself out of his post-relapse despond, Sherlock had reached an even keel. A clean buttoned-up shirt every day, eating and sleeping at pre-Oscar levels, speaking when spoken to. He went to meetings most days, and, finally, just the week before, visited Alfredo. He’d even roused Watson once with a breakfast tray and an update on a case. He hadn’t returned to consulting with Major Crimes — hadn’t asked, hadn’t been asked, and she didn’t know if this was some sort of stalemate yet to be resolved or the transition to a new perch, as he’d once called it. Instead, he assigned himself to the cold-case trunk, not quite asking her permission but pausing long enough after telling her his plan that she felt he was waiting for her assent. They didn’t discuss it, but it appeared he was starting with the cases he deemed most in need of amends due to his former drug use, and made careful, steady progress through them.

Watson continued to split her time between private cases and working with the police, but reinstated the practice she’d let slip in the months after moving back. Now, although she didn’t bother nailing the door again, she stuck to using the exterior stairs to get to and from her office, left all NYPD documentation down there, and, as much as possible, did not discuss that work elsewhere in the brownstone. Sherlock responded with subdued respect for the boundaries dividing up her life. She in turn respected his renewed commitment to structure, of course she did, but she hadn’t realized how often her own habits of reticence had been undercut by his disregard of all that, until now. The brownstone was a quiet, introspective place these days, and she had no idea how to complain about that.

Sherlock lost his equilibrium the day Ian emailed them an invitation to a fundraiser for a grant in Alistair’s honor to fund new plays at his former theatre company. The event was a pair of staged readings, one for the first play awarded the grant, and the other the second act of _Waiting for Godot_.

Watson tracked him to the roof the next afternoon; she thought he might have spent the night there. Sherlock sprawled awkwardly over the small wooden folding chair, legs akimbo and shoulders hunched. He was back in sweats and a t-shirt, this time covered with a dark wool coat that had seen better days: threadbare at the shoulders and elbows, with frayed cuffs and a ragged collar. She couldn’t tell what color it had been originally, dark grey or navy or black. There was a tear on the placket where one of the buttons had been half-torn off and dangled loosely; some of the other buttons were missing altogether. The sleeves were too long for him, so only his fingertips were visible where each hand gripped the opposite bicep.

She stood in silence for a few minutes and then shifted her feet, sighed, and said, “I want to go.” He flinched and then cringed when she winced in turn, hastily clarifying, “Alistair, I mean. Let’s go, both of us. To the fundraiser, but first to visit his grave. It won’t fix anything, but it’s something that’s better than this—” she waved vaguely at him “—this nothing, isn’t it?” He didn’t reply, and after a moment she said in low, hesitant voice, “I bought tulips for him.”

There was no question he’d been wrong to run to London when she wanted to move out. That he was the one who damaged the partnership, not her. He voluntarily conceded the point, repeatedly. So often, perhaps, that its meaning was wearing a bit thin. Nevertheless, she stayed when she said she would, the only person close to him who didn’t disappear in the end. He equivocated with himself for a moment, thinking of the times she faded away, withdrew into herself. It was happening right now, in fact. (and whose fault was that?) But still, withdrawn and silent or not, here she was. With him.

And yet part of him refused to accept that plain truth, the obvious facts supporting this miracle of her presence, just as he couldn’t simply trust he’d remain sober for a year, or a day. Or an hour. Three decades of precedent, and Alistair still fell. So just then, when she said she wanted to go, that part recoiled, while the rest of him cowered in shame for revealing doubts she didn’t deserve. While she in turn seemed to feel responsible for causing his emotional incompetence.

What a pair.

She was surprised when he stood up slowly, turning to face her, and gently resettled the coat, taking care not to strain the weakened seams. He patted the left lapel — where there was no pin, unlike the coat he usually wore — with reverence, as if touching the heart that beat underneath. Like it was a family heirloom or a valued antique, not something Goodwill would toss in the rag bin.

“He wore this. Alistair, in _Waiting for Godot_. It was Vladimir’s costume, and after the play closed, I broke into the theatre and stole it. I never told him.” A fleeting wry smile. “My first foray into petty larceny, not counting pilfering the contraband in Mycroft’s room of course,” he flicked a dismissive hand. “I was twelve. Twelve, and I made Mycroft take me to see his play, and afterwards Alistair remembered my letter. He knew me. I know— I know there are others who know me now. You, more than anyone, Watson. But Alistair. He was the first person…the first friend… And then… And now I have a first edition of words he revered and this coat.” He swallowed and looked away, across the river.

“We didn’t talk about you, when I met Alistair for tea. It was usually books, or the play he was working on, or his in-laws. He gave me some good advice about my mother, actually.” She smiled, shaking her head as she remembered. “He was good at that. Connecting with people. It was easy to talk to him. I miss that.” She sighed, and Sherlock glanced at her, and looked away, and back again. She sighed again and looked more closely at the coat sagging off his frame.

“Did you actually wear that when you were twelve? it must have swallowed you whole.”

“A few times. I rolled up the sleeves. That wasn’t why I took it.”

“I know.” She tucked her own hands into her coat sleeves. Practical, sturdy stylish sleeves. Unremarkable sleeves, with no associated history or loss. Meaningless sleeves, not attached to anything. I feel unmoored, she thought, and the pun hit with unexpected force. “Are you going to come with me? To the cemetery?” Her voice sounded almost shrill to her ears, but his eyes softened and she thought maybe he was actually seeing her for the first time in weeks. He gave a little nod.

“I need to change first,” he said, and she nodded her accord, and they made their way back inside.


	13. Underdog (jwp 12)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is it the hair?”  
> 12 july prompt: [Doyle vs Dogs](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1339341.html)

“That’s at least the third dog we’ve come across who didn’t like you.” Joan looked fondly over her shoulder at the chocolate lab barking at them as they walked across the park. “And labs like _everybody_.”

Sherlock grimaced and increased his pace enough that she had to skip a couple of steps to catch up.

“I know you don’t like cats, so I bet they’re all over you whenever you’re in the same room, which only makes you hate them more.”

They reached the corner where a swift flow of traffic blocked his path, and he pressed the walk signal button repeatedly.

“You’re not against household animals in general, obviously. You’ve got Clyde, and the bees. And those chickens you rescued.” She watched him fidget at the curb. “Is it the hair?”

He pressed his lips together and checked his watch.

“Did you have pets as a kid? No, you were at boarding school… Is that it? You always wanted a dog but couldn’t have one?”

He shot across the street the moment the light turned and was half-way up the block before she crossed the intersection, done with hurrying. They were going to the same meeting, and she hadn’t told him the name of their contact, just the address. By the time he deduced who was expecting them from the directory, she’d have caught up, and it would be time to get back to work. The Mystery of Sherlock’s Aversion to Cats and Dogs would have to wait.


	14. Palimpsest (jwp 13)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dream Joan walks down a long corridor that’s her home but it’s not like any place she actually lived.  
> 13 july prompt: [A Tale Foretold](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1345492.html)  
> wordcount: 221b

In the dream Joan walks down a long corridor that’s her home but it’s not like any place she actually lived. There are many doors off each side, some closed, some ajar, some wide open. Sometimes she’s frightened as she walks past them, but this time she’s calm and focused, looking for a particular room and disregarding the others. When she finds it, she’s as happy as she’s ever been: it’s her room, bright with everything she loves. Favorite toys and books; one window overlooking the ocean and another with a view of a city built into foothills of towering green mountains topped with snow.

Inside it’s like finding parts of herself she’d put down and forgotten. Vibrant colors, rich fabrics, flowering plants with heady scents. She wants to sing and dance in the room, and spins and spins until she collapses in a dizzy high. Her hand brushes something solid under a pillow, and she pulls out a small book, bight blue, with a delicate binding and locked clasp. She pulls the key from the chain around her neck, and it fits perfectly, unlocking the diary she’d received for her tenth birthday. She remembers the excitement and anticipation of what she’d put inside, just for herself. She delicately turns the pages, soothed by what she finds there: Every one blank.


	15. Birds of a Feather (jwp 14)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You like them.” Sherlock stood in front of the fireplace, eyes slightly narrowed as he made the pronouncement. “Romulus and Remus.”  
> 04 july prompt: [Not So Cute](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1351022.html)

“You like them.” Sherlock stood in front of the fireplace, eyes slightly narrowed as he made the pronouncement. “Romulus and Remus.”

Joan looked up from where she sat on the library couch, book balanced on one knee and Remus on the other, and tried to decide if he was accusing her or just deducing.

“When they’re not being used as a props in some adolescent comedy show, yeah. I like them.” She stroked Remus’ back with one finger, like she’d seen Sherlock do. “Not enough to want to keep them permanently,” she hastily amended. “They shouldn’t be house pets, and we don’t have space for a nice coop outside.” He opened his mouth to rebut. “And the roof doesn’t count, not unless you want to retrofit the building to handle the weight of a green roof.” Sherlock subsided with a grimace and a slump; Remus gave him a side eye at the movement, but Joan distracted him — Remus — with another series of gentle pets.

“Anyway, I’m glad you rescued them, and I’ll be sad when they’re gone, but I won’t miss being woken up at dawn or almost stepping in bird poo in every room of the house.”

Remus burbled a soft clattering rejoinder and pushed off Joan’s knee to land on the floor and cross the room where Sherlock had dropped some seed. Remus’ interest in the snack lured Romulus to join him from where he’d been sitting on a short stack of books next to the locks. Sherlock looked down at them with a pleased expression, one she realized she’d seen before.

“You’re bribing the chickens so they’ll prefer you over me?”

“I’ve done no such thing,” he said with disdain. “I’m merely conducting experiments on how quickly they can respond to changing stimuli.”

She smiled at him. “Of course you are. Certainly it’s not that you’re going to miss them too.”

“My interest is entirely scientific,” he said with a furtive glance and sprinkled a bit more seed on the floor between them.


	16. Mother of—! (jwp 15)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sherlock, we have never had Christmas dinner.”  
> 15 july prompt: [That Old Saying](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1356084.html)  
> 100 words

“Sherlock, have you seen my— are those my glasses!?”

“I needed to test how the refraction by the lenses changes the intensity of the heat lamp on these goose eggs I’m incubating. Never fear, Watson, they’re safe as houses.”

“Goose— unless you’re planning to heat them right through to hard-boiled in the next 10 minutes, give me my glasses back right now. And we are not raising goslings.”

“Geese make excellent guard animals; you know we have many enemies. Not to mention Christmas dinner.”

“Sherlock, we have never had Christmas dinner.”

“Well, we didn’t have geese before, did we?”


	17. Phoenix (jwp 16)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every death she witnessed was one she felt she should have prevented, felt it like a knife.  
> 16 july prompt: [Picture Prompt: Ablaze](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1361925.html)  
> More Reichenbach variation. See also entries for JWP 1, 5-9.

The moment Holmes walked into the room he knew he was right about Moriarty’s plans. And not merely because of the body unceremoniously dumped in front of the desk: white male, approximately 40 years of age, wearing clothes he did not doubt had very recently been liberated from his own wardrobe in the brownstone. Not that much of that evidence would survive the imminent inferno, but devotion to detail was one of the things they shared. The timing, the layout of the furniture, the location of this room within the building; it all spoke to meticulous arrangement. As did the scent of accelerant rapidly evaporating off the carpet and upholstery. But she would know he’d notice all of that. So he needed something else, something… Ah! He ran to the body and fumbled with the coat, murmuring an apology, before switching shoes with the deceased. He heard the soft click of the mechanism and in the remaining two seconds of his life did what he could to ensure his resurrection.

Evading Moriarty’s extraction team was simple enough but escaping the cordoned-off impromptu demolition site altogether was more of a challenge. The bleeding was minimal, but his balance was shot, and the air was thick with dust and debris. A stealthy retreat was out of the question as he coughed and lurched his way around collapsed walls and girders. Given the circumstances, he made do with luck providing a working fire alarm next to the basement stairwell, and the sprinkler system reduced his tracks to illegible mud after he picked the lock and made his way underground.

*

He hadn’t seen Teddy in years, not since he’d started university, and he wouldn’t actually see him now, either, but the young man was sharp. He’d remember the code and know what to do, even after all this time. The question was what Watson would do. Would she assume it was a trick? Another of Moriarty’s schemes? Or would she disown him for keeping this threat from her? 

Every time he did it, he knew it could be the last. Obviously he would always choose the outcome in which Watson survived, even if that meant never seeing her again himself. She refused to sacrifice the partnership for her own sake, but he held no such compunction. In the absence of alternatives, he would have her live, without him. Eventually, it would happen one time too many, and she would excise him herself. The fact that she hadn’t yet was a perpetual mystery.

*

The frenzy of rush-hour Grand Central Station provided sufficient cover for a grimy shambling figure and ample opportunities for pickpocketing, although he dropped the phone at a ticket counter after texting Teddy. Even a burner would be risky with the technology resources Moriarty had at hand, and she’d be motivated to use them all once he turned up dead. Not that she’d believe it right away; she would be far to arrogant to imagine her plan had failed. She would look for him, and when the evidence at the site was inconclusive, she’d look to Watson to inadvertently give him away. And she’d underestimate Watson one last time.

He felt sick at the cruelty of it, the guilt Watson would draw down on herself for not going with him into the building. It made him angry too, out of impotence and futility. It was an utterly irrational response; it’s not as if her presence could have somehow prevented the explosion! In truth, he doubted both of them could have survived it, if she’d been there. But now, right now, she almost certainly thought he was dead and that she hadn’t stopped it. It wouldn’t matter that she couldn’t have stopped it. He’d never been able to shift her on that point. Every death she witnessed was one she felt she should have prevented, felt it like a knife. He could only hope he’d be able to reveal himself before she cut herself too deeply. And then he’d pay the price for the rest.


	18. Ashes (jwp 17)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, she hadn’t expected him.  
> 17 July prompt: [But Aside From That, Dr. Watson, How Did You Like the Trip to Switzerland?](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1366530.html)  
> More Reichenbach variation. See also entries for JWP 1, 5-9, 16.

The first thing he noticed was Watson’s voice, and that it sounded nothing like her; later she explained she’d spent hours breathing atomized plaster and cement while searching the rubble for him before the so-called first responders forced her out. Lost her voice calling for him, is what she didn’t say. Always something else to loose, it would seem. That was part of it, certainly, but something else had changed, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. And then, when he stepped out of the deepest shadow by their back door, she made a noise he’d never heard from her before, a terrible gulping gasped sob that she cut off almost immediately, though whether her suppression of sound came from recognizing the need for secrecy or simple mortification, he couldn't say. Part of him longed to hear it again, to try to understand what it meant. Part of him hoped he’d go to his grave none the wiser.

She took a half step back when he moved toward her, steadying herself against the door frame. She was shaking, breathing through her mouth, hands trembling like his. Apparently, she hadn’t been expecting him. “I can explain, Watson, but we need to get inside. I can’t be seen, not here and now now.”

She stepped back into the shadows of the kitchen then, and he crowded in after her, slamming and locking the door behind them. He gave himself a moment to lean back against it and feel grateful he’d made it before stepping forward into Watson’s spot light. She was waiting for him.

“This was intentional? I mean, obviously it was, but it was intended for you?”

“Us. Yes. This was about us.”

Her grip tightened on the back of the chair, but her breathing had slowed and the shivering was gone. When she spoke her voice had shifted yet again, still harsh from overuse but with an edge of hard steel, directed at the table. “You mean this was Moriarty.” She looked up at him then, and someone he didn’t know at all looked out through her eyes. His turn to shiver, now. If that was how she reacted to a person who put others in harm’s way, no wonder she struggled so to forgive herself. 

She shook her head, as if clearing his thoughts from her mind. Then a deep inhale, a long blink, and finally she was there again. He breathed a sigh of relief, the first since the explosion. “I told you you should have gotten a new nemesis,” she said.


	19. Middlegame (jwp 18)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More to the point, he and Watson didn’t rely on signs and ciphers.  
> 18 July Prompt: [The Games We Play.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1371341.html)  
> More Reichenbach variation. See also entries for JWP 1, 5-9, 16-17.

It was a risk, but they decided they could trust the security of the brownstone to be impenetrable to Moriarty’s surveillance for another day before they’d have to move Sherlock to the safe house. His filthy clothes were sent to the basement for eventual nutmeg-scented disposal. Watson ordered a pizza while he was in the shower, figuring that was normal enough behavior not to rouse suspicion, and he thought about Yorkshire puddings as she doctored the worst of his scrapes and abrasions.

When they settled in the library, he felt the need to clear his mind of Moriarty’s pernicious machinations with a purer form, so once the fire was started, he reached for the Indian chess set. “I don’t know how your day was, Watson, but I could use—“

“Yes, you do,” she interrupted in a low voice. He looked over to her, eyebrows raised, where she sat on the red couch, staring at the tightly closed shutters as if she could see through to the dark outside. “In London. Before. You thought… The person you…” She swallowed and looked up at him. “You. You know?”

“Watson,” he breathed, stricken. “I never wanted—“ and at the abashed look on her face he put up his hands, “I didn’t mean— That was the worst of it, you thinking I’d abandoned you again, until I could get word.”

“‘Abandoned.’ That’s not…” She shifted back to press into the corner of the couch and pulled her knees in more tightly to her chest. “Never mind; I’m still kind of in shock, first from…that, and now that you’re not. And I’m not even the one who got blown up. Sorry. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

He scrunched up his face in exasperation, unable to form the words. If there were time to write a letter… But no; that medium was poisoned. More to the point, he and Watson didn’t rely on signs and ciphers. One reason their partnership engaged him so completely was its perennial mystery, his inability to put it into words. It was frustrating at times, infuriating and fascinating. And sometimes it was terrifying, when he stumbled across evidence of its vulnerability and how vulnerable he was, in it. Worse still, to find she could be vulnerable, too.

He stepped over to the couch and sat down primly on the centre cushion. After gathering his resolve, he turned toward her and reached out to place a shaky hand on the end her sleeve, then deliberately slid his thumb to make contact with the top of her wrist and let it rest there. Her glance shifted in a flash of surprise, but she didn’t move away. He felt her take in a breath as if to speak, and he increased the pressure of his grip slightly in reassurance. She released the breath, listing a bit toward him. Outside, they could hear the usual mutter of city activity, and inside the quiet flutter of flames under a drafty flue. The eye of the storm. 

“Yes, I knew then” he said, emphasizing the verb. “But now I know, too.”


	20. Two Times Joan Woke to Music and Five Times It Was Something Else Instead (jwp 19)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Whose idea was it to get Joan a bicycle?"  
> 19 July prompt: [While You Were Sleeping](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1375670.html)

Their bedroom doorknob rattled and the door shook a little, and Joan peeked through the crib slats to see Oren’s scrunched up face, his eyes squeezed shut. Outside in the hallway, her mother spoke in a soothing voice over her father’s loud breathing. “No, Hui, don’t wake them. They’re safe in there, remember you took precautions? You took care of everything, just leave the door closed now, that will keep them safe.”

“The men were asking about them, wanting to know their secrets. Don’t let them tell their secrets!”

“All right, they won't tell anything they shouldn't. They're sleeping now. In the morning, you and I will explain everything. Then they’ll remember. Come away now, Hui. It’s all right. We’re all safe now.”

* * *

Joan woke to a clank of metal and her parents’ hushed laughter downstairs as something was shoved across the living room carpet and paper rustled. “Does anybody ever test these instructions?” her dad asked. “Why would I attach the rear fender to the front wheel?”

“That’s not what it says… Let me take a look.” Paper crinkled again, and a pause, and then her mother hmmed. “You’re right; that makes no sense." Another soft thud. "Whose idea was it to get Joan a bicycle?”

* * *

Em’s key fumbled in the lock, and Joan heard her inebriated whisper, “No, my roommate’s asleep, don’t come in; I’ll just get my bag.” She swore under her breath as she banged into the desk chair and fumbled around on the floor by her bed. Joan was tempted to just turn on the light but Em got gregarious when she drank and sounded too tipsy to realize that neither Joan nor the guy waiting for her in the hallway would want that.

* * *

Outside the staff door, the nurse said, “What do you want me to do? She’s had three hours, the kid’s seizing, and none of the other residents can take it. Go get her!”

* * *

The mattress shuddered slightly as Liam eased off the bed, slipping out from under the covers to avoid tugging them off her. He must have had his pager on vibrate. He tiptoed out of the room, and a couple of minutes later she heard the low rumbling of his voice on the phone. She pulled the pillow over her head so she wouldn’t hear the front door close when he left to meet his dealer.

* * *

After the first time she heard him play it, Joan didn’t hear Sherlock’s violin for months, although she saw the closed violin case in his room a few times. She asked him about it once more in the first six weeks, but he predictably frowned, disregarded the question, and started explaining his his studies on urban scat identification instead. 

It was soon after the dry cleaners bust that she finally heard him play it again, plucking faintly at the strings as he held it vertical in his lap while staring at the Moriarty wall. She pushed up from the couch where she’d fallen asleep, her movement startling him. The violin gave one loud twang as he jerked his head to see her awake.

* * *

Joan smiled to herself in the dark and held still where she lay stretched out in the backseat. They’d been on a stakeout forever, it seemed, and after four hours and her increasing yawns, Marcus told her to take a nap. “I had a double shot before we got here, I’m good for a while yet.” She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but she hoped the quiet private concert of half-hummed show tunes would last at least a couple more songs before he wised up to having an audience.


	21. Voices Carry (jwp 20)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There’s, I don’t know, something strident about your American accents."  
> 20 July prompt: [Yankee Doodle Came to London](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1381176.html)  
> words: 221b

“Tell ‘Manny’ forget it. Sherlock, I know it’s you.”

The phone was silent, and Joan could practically hear his face screw up to scowl. “Should have used a different name,” he muttered.

“No, I can always tell it’s you. There’s, I don’t know, something strident about your American accents. You put too much into it. And they’re always weird. Not fake; just a bit over the top in their particularity.”

The quality of the silence slid from slighted to crestfallen, and she rolled her eyes, feeling like she just took Santa Claus away from somebody who was old enough to know better.

“I get it; you enjoy it, and it works fine when it’s somebody who doesn’t know you.” There was a faint sniff of scorn in her ear at the condescension. She continued before he pressed a denial. “It doesn’t work with me, though, so give it up.”

He replied with a theatrical sigh, unable even to assert his superiority over her, as she’d conceded that point from the start: she was terrible at accents and never tried them. Then he cleared his throat, and she caught her mistake, too late.

“You do realize you’ve thrown down the gauntlet, Watson,” he ended the call.

Better see how those voice recognition apps are coming along, she thought, and opened a browser.


	22. Something about the Heat (jwp 21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I shall have to seriously reconsider my association with the detective if this is the sort of behaviour that passes muster with Marcus.”  
> 21 July prompt: [Heat Rash](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1385831.html)

Something heavy hit the front door, rattling the glass in the foyer. Heavy enough to have been carried up the steps first, but no knock or buzzer followed the initial thud. Holmes was just getting to the interesting bits in a newly acquired 1992 issue of his favourite conspiracy theorists’ zine, it was easily 40 degrees outside in that blast furnace passing for summer in New York, and Watson wasn’t home to be badgered into responding. Which meant whatever package was unceremoniously left on their stoop would be baking, melting, or possibly decomposing at an alarming rate. He put the magazine down, careful not to crease the pages, and went to the door.

A look out the peep hole showed no one waiting or fleeing the scene under the white-hot sun, and the lens didn’t provide a visual of the threshold. With a disgruntled sigh, he pulled open the door and scrambled away as Watson toppled backwards, arms flailing, from where she’d been sitting against the door.

“What’d you do that for?” She made a weak attempt to sit up before shifting sideways to kick the door closed and collapsing down again, eyes closed. “Ah, that’s nice. Dark and cool. I’m never leaving this spot.”

“I was responding to a rather loud thump on the door. And yourself?”

She frowned. “I was just resting a moment before coming in.” He looked at her more closely. Sheen of sweat over unusually pallid tone, pulse a bit rapid, signs of severe dehydration, bare arms showing indication of sunburn, sweat-stained shirt, running shorts, running shoes.

“Where you continued trying to let the blood boil in your brain?”

“Marcus and I meet to run every Saturday we’re not working.”

“I shall have to seriously reconsider my association with the detective if this is the sort of behaviour that passes muster with Marcus.” He drew himself up and settled his expression into his most profound disappointment frown, the one reminiscent of Abe Lincoln around the eyes.

“Well, no, Marcus cancelled on me. Something about the heat. But I was already at the park when he called. What’s a few sweaty miles?”

“When was the last time you had any water?”

Her brow furrowed in the effort to dredge up the memory. “I had water. Or. Almost. I almost had water."

“You almost had heat stroke. Wait here.” Not a problem, Joan thought as Sherlock stomped off, each step pounding a little deeper into her already pounding skull. Maybe it _was_ a little foolish to pretend she wasn’t almost 15 years older than Marcus and occasionally had to push herself to keep up with him, even when he wasn’t actually there. Especially when he wasn’t actually there and she didn’t get to admire his, uh, form. His running form.

“He’ll say yes if you ask. Drink this slowly.” Sherlock handed her a glass of water and a dropped a cold, wet dish towel on her knee. “I recommend you not spend the night on the floor here. In the short term it may feel like the lap of luxury, but by tomorrow you’ll regret it.”

“Sort of like the bear-skin rug, then.”

“Precisely.”

“Okay.” She was suddenly too tired to come up with a suitable rejoinder, and a wave of exhaustion knocked her flat. Someone gave her a one-handed pull upright, although she thought it might be a dream. Someone was also kind enough not to mock her moans as she staggered up the stairs to a cool shower and bed.


	23. the mess of all I have thrown away (jwp 22)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joan never wanted to be in a school play.  
> 22 July prompt: [While You Were Out](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1390336.html).  
> Reichenbach variation continues. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Goodnight New York" by Vienna Teng
> 
> I try not to give into the urge to complain about what I post, but today’s entry is a bare sketch of what should be a larger, plot-filled, emotionally urgent section of whatever this is going to turn out to be post-JWP. Which is to say, it’s a bit clunky and much too short for what needs to happen, but I have to go to bed, so this is what I’m posting.

Joan never wanted to be in a school play, never had friends who were in drama club, never even went to the theatre for most of her life. Perfecting her poker face was the extent of her acting ability, a skill that came in handy in both medicine and detective work, as it happened. If it also helped to shield her from prying questions about how she was feeling, she wasn’t going to complain. Most of the time people didn’t really want to know, anyway.

This day, it took everything she had to play the part of stoic, shut-down, broken Joan Watson woodenly reading her stilted words at the memorial service. Ironically, it came all too naturally keep a lid on the turmoil: shame because she could draw on her experience when Andrew died, guilt and anger that she had to lie to her friends and colleagues, anxiety that Moriarty’s spies would see through the act, fear that she’d fail and more people would die. And underneath it all a premonition of what she’d actually feel if this were real, the looming wall she’d felt bearing down on her those hours of numb horror between the explosion and his return. If she’d had to express all that, it would have truly broken her into pieces she’d never get back.

But Marcus and Leonora and Emily and even her mother were all familiar with a Joan who kept everything bottled inside, and they believed her understated grief to be greater than what she showed. They’d nag her in the days that followed, each only wanting to help, making it all so much harder. None of them thought she should be by herself after the service, and it took 20 minutes and a promise to spend the night at her mother’s to be granted a moment’s peace and a few hours alone at the brownstone. 

She was almost glad that the house felt utterly wrong without Sherlock, a fair punishment for the pain their plan caused and the living conditions he had to endure. It was a relief to make some small token of penance in the face of the good chance their plan would fail and one or both of them wouldn’t come back. She wasn’t willing to make that level of sacrifice to pay for what they were doing, but it felt right that she wasn’t comfortable in their home any more. 

The day someone’s remains were officially identified as Sherlock, she started sleeping in her office. There were practical and logistical concerns related to their plan that made moving into the basement useful, but she didn’t have to act when she said she couldn’t sleep in her room anymore. She was desperate for that retreat now, after this very long day.

When she got out of the taxi from the memorial, she stood on the sidewalk and stared up at the building, floor after floor of shuttered silence. She shivered and turned down the narrow steps that led to the basement. There in the dim shadows, a white envelope glowed where it was pinned to the door. Her hand reached out, but she stopped in time; she should get gloves for this.

Her first thought was Sherlock! But immediately scoffed at herself because he’d never jeopardize her that way. Moriarty was the obvious candidate, and this another of her mind games. Or it could be something entirely innocuous. She didn’t know what to do. The inanity of it, that she should be brought to a standstill — after everything! — by a piece of folded paper, suddenly made her livid. She snapped on the last extra gloves she had in her coat pocket and ripped the envelope off the door. The push pin came with it, stuck through a card inside. She stripped the envelope away to reveal a blank pre-franked postcard. Very similar to one she once received before, with a drawing of a coffee cup. There was no address on this one, no writing at all. Just a tiny sketch of some small flightless insect.

I’m just glad I made it into the animate category, she thought, and then started to cry.


	24. Undermine (jwp 23)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She’s hardly the sentimental type.”  
> 23 July prompt: [Improvised Tools](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1395156.html)  
> Reichenbach variation continues. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22. This one follows directly from my jwp 7 fill, [Condolences](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4034770/chapters/9725262), and may not make sense if you don't read that first.

Joan had told Sherlock about the note on the door via email drop, but Moriarty's letter and its contents required more substantial communication. The video quality was terrible and the audio worse, between the need to minimize bandwidth and the layers of encryption, but after a week of separation, both of them sat glued to their screens.

“The letter is typical, all sly digs and barbs,” and still mostly misses, Joan thought, except for the first one. “But taking the house: that seems a bit much; it’s not like she needs a place to stay. It’s a rash move, so soon after…everything. I think she’s desperate.”

“Agreed. If she’s still in doubt regarding my demise, she can’t think I would hide there.”

“Plus there’d be so much trace evidence from you living here that she couldn’t use any of that to verify whether you’ve been here since the explosion. I suppose it could be a kind of trophy? Something to remember you by.”

“She’s hardly the sentimental type.”

“I was thinking more like a serial killer,” Joan muttered.

“It’s not sentiment, no…. No, it’s control. Ownership. Literal, in this case.” He considered it further. “Your portrait.”

“It may be _of_ me, but that monstrosity’s not mine.”

“The motivation behind it was the same, though: you were a factor she overlooked, the reason she was caught. You were the one who got away, so she painted you as retaliation. ”

“And the land grab now? Retaliating against you because you foiled her plan this time, with your death? If she can’t have you, she’ll take everything you had.”

“Perhaps. And that leaves you—“

“Irrelevant, now. A bug to scurry and hide or be stepped on. And without anything you had, because she took it all. But still, why now?”

“Why now…” He suddenly jerked upright. “No, we’ve looked at this the wrong way. She’s _not_ sentimental. Something else is going on. Another layer here we’ve overlooked. This isn’t about ignoring her but rather inadvertently disturbing yet another project of greed and destruction she’d been evilly masterminding. We got in her way, and now she wants to make sure we, or you, now, are sufficiently distracted to let her get on with it.”

“We need to work on that, then. No more accidental crime stopping, okay? It only makes them madder.”


	25. The Hour of Lead (jwp 24)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’d known Sherlock Holmes a long time, far longer than Joan had known him, though of course never as well.  
> 24 July prompt: [A Long-Suffering Woman](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1400152.html)  
> Reichenbach variation continues. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22-23  
> Title from [Emily Dickinson](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177118).
> 
> The link in the first sentence of the fic refers to a set of pieces from last year's JWP, but all you need to know is that I named Ms Hudson Leonora, and she and Joan are good friends.

Joan often frowned in her sleep, Leonora knew, thinking back to their [road trip](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1813216/chapters/4276917) and the many expressions of Joan Watson she’d come to know after days and days of travel. The frown now could simply be her face in repose, and not an indication of a troubled heart. If only that were the case, she sighed to herself. But the same reason that likely created that frown was why she herself was awake to see it. 

She’d known Sherlock Holmes a long time, far longer than Joan had known him, though of course never as well. He was prickly and driven and extraordinarily focused. Unwilling to compromise his principles, whether they be scientific or philosophical. And with a deep, if hidden, wellspring of compassion. Joan could be like that too, although that similarity hardly explained their relationship. It surprised everyone, its principals most of all, Leonora imagined.

And now… The loss would hit Joan hard, once she allowed herself to feel it. Her behavior was becoming a bit erratic, ten days since Sherlock died. At first she’d adamantly insisted she be left alone at their home. But now, she suddenly wanted to move out immediately, and in a day had all but accomplished the task. The only help she’d requested was a place to stay until she found a new apartment, and Leonora was only too glad to be able to do something even if it seemed to be a decision Joan would eventually regret. 

She supposed it was displacement of some kind, the urge to be helpful after a tragedy you weren’t able to prevent. Sherlock would want someone to care for Joan when he couldn’t. In that way it was something she could do for both of them. The symmetry of the situation felt right as well: although it had been Sherlock who offered her sanctuary in the storm, Joan was the one who’d made her feel welcome and cared for that winter weekend when they first met. She was relieved that Joan turned to her for sanctuary now, and that in turn helped soothe her own grief, the littlest bit.


	26. The Mud Upon Your Boots (jwp 25)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "One of the first things you said to me about this work was that there are stories within crime scenes, and we can help tell them."  
> 25 July prompt: [Picture Prompt: Fanworks Through the Ages. (Picture of a poem published in the Milwaulkee Ledger, 1895.)](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1404237.html)
> 
> It's not particularly relevant to the story, but this takes place in a middle-distance future that I first wrote about in [one of my favorite entries](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1813216/chapters/4172004) from last year's JWP.

“Is this your doing?” Sherlock waved the tablet indignantly as he reached the top of the stairs and strode across the new study. Joan sat under the skylights, hand paused halfway to setting her tea cup down on the side table at his exclamation. She raised her eyebrows in expectation.

“This— More drivel penned by another of our students. That makes five of them Watson. Five scribes out of seven. Six out of eight if I count the instigator of all this.” He glared at her.

“Oh, is Nori’s new story out? Let me see!” She set the cup down and held out her hand, insistent. “Give it here!”

He did his little two-step of impatience, intensified his glare, and thrust the tablet at her.

“Oh, she dedicated it to us. That’s lovely.” Joan smiled at the text and then sent herself the link to read it later, outside the range of Sherlock’s irritation. “You know your attitude is a bit ridiculous, right?” She passed the tablet back to him.

“Not a rigorous scholar among them. Among _you_. Fiction, pulp pieces, sensationalist claptrap, melodrama. Where’s the data? The evidence and peer review? This is not what I taught you, what we taught them.” He threw the tablet onto the work table. “Why should we bother? If this is what comes of it.”

“What is your problem? One of the first things you said to me about this work was that there are stories within crime scenes, and we can help tell them. You write all kinds of things, all the time. How are Nori’s and Amidio’s and Kitty’s, and yes, my writing, any different from that?”

He scrunched up his face and scrubbed at the side of his head. “None of it, it’s not—“ He slumped a bit and tapped the notes for his current project with one finger. “It’s not how I would tell it,” he admitted, deflated.

“No…” she drawled out the word into a question. “We use your methods to train detectives, but writing for publication — any publication — hasn’t exactly been a focus of the curriculum. In fact, if I remember correctly, you were pretty put-out when you found my first manuscript even existed. By going through the laptop’s trash, I might add, in case you thought I forgot about that part of the story. So. Is it the lack of academic jargon that’s bugging you, or is it any public airing of our experiences as stories, rather than dry case reports, that you don’t like?”

He didn’t reply, except with a tight shake of his head, and sat down at his work. Joan considered his profile, still stern in expression but she thought more stern with himself than with the perceived failings of others. She’d enjoyed having students who shared her interest in writing stories along with becoming detectives, but now it occurred to her with some chagrin that she’d never imagined he might wish for a similar simpatico.

“We could look for an academic next time. Someone with an interest in scientific research? We don’t have to wait for a student to find us first.”

He shook his head again and replied in a quieter tone. “Never mind. I over-reacted. I…may have neglected to mention my article on correlation between the color palette of an individual’s wardrobe and a particular range of personal characteristics was rejected by _Psychological Minutiae_ after two cycles of revise-and-resubmit and scurrilous defamation of character by a so-called anonymous reviewer. On the plus side, I now have sufficient data for an exposé on bias in the publication process, having deduced who is determined to block my work there.”

“If you want an entirely unbiased reader, I’d be happy to oblige. I was trained under rigorous and highly objective methods, I’ll have you know.”

“I heard your teacher was an eccentric crackpot,” he said.

“Well, that’s another story.”


	27. On Target (jwp 26)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’re working together right now. Through all of this. Don’t you forget that.”  
> 26 July prompt: [The One You Were Expecting](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1408239.html): I expected a prompt for something based on ACD canon. 
> 
> This installment of my Reichenbach variation takes some specific details from the start of "The Final Problem." See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22-24.

The close call from the left-turning taxi as Joan hurried to the subway gave her a jolt of adrenaline but was otherwise unremarkable. Later, she assumed that was the intent: both its commonplace quality and that it was a near-miss. The shifting construction debris that brought down the scaffolding just as she passed really got her attention, if not quite her suspicion: her first thought following two narrowly avoided accidents was that she was putting herself and more importantly the plan in danger by her own carelessness. It took the mugging to connect the dots: Moriary was mad.

When he saw the cast Sherlock’s eyes bulged, and she didn’t think it was the crap video that made his face that red. “It’s a simple break, and it doesn’t interfere with my hand.” She wiggled her fingers at the webcam. “You should see the other guy.” she quipped.

His eyes narrowed at the thought. “Would that I could.” 

“I managed just fine on my own.”

He released his menacing glare with a small nod. “Of that I have no doubt. I assume he had nothing for the police?”

She sighed. “Just confirmation it wasn’t a random attack, but no way to trace the person who hired him.” She hesitated and looked away.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“The codeword he said they used for the job. ‘Mascot.’”

The image on her laptop jumped and shook when he abruptly pushed away from his table. There was a crash off screen, and then she could see him pacing in the background, fists clenching and releasing. Then he stopped and stood still for a moment and walked back to sit down again. “Sorry,” he said quietly.

“It’s okay,” she said. “This is good. It’s working. She’s staying focused on me and the investigation to prove she killed you. You won’t have to stay there much longer.”

“No.” He released his breath in a huff. “It will be some time before we can work together again, however.”

“We’re working together right now. Through all of this. Don’t you forget that.”

“You know what I mean, Watson.”

“I know exactly what you mean, and you’re wrong. Our plan is working because she thinks our partnership only exists if your mascot can follow you around and do your bidding.” He made a pained noise. “She doesn’t understand partnership. She doesn’t understand friendship.” She doesn’t understand love, Joan didn’t say. “Don’t let her undermine your trust in what we’re doing. Your trust in us.”


	28. Through the Blinds (jwp 27)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’d never met the man who fell in love with a mirage, only the one wrecked by it, afterwards.  
> 27 July prompt: ["Aside from yourself, I have none." ](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1412479.html)
> 
> Reichenbach variation. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22-24, 26.

In that brief window between finding Irene and finding out she never existed, Joan had actually wondered if the two of them might become friends. She spent several hours a day in the hospital those first days after, mostly waiting with Sherlock when Irene was being evaluated or getting therapy of one kind or another. She wished he would seek therapy, too, but didn’t bother to suggest it. He’d regained some composure by the second day, but he would speak only of Irene: her needs, her care. Otherwise he was silent and, for him, unnaturally still. Joan kept having to look over to check that he was there, sitting stiffly in the waiting room or doctor’s office without the flutter of fingers or fidgeting in her peripheral vision to signal his presence. He wasn’t present, not at all, and Joan was at a loss as how to help.

From the little Sherlock had told her before, the relationships he had with each of them were nothing alike. Irene was not a detective, did not want to be a detective, and had nothing to do with his work beyond the initial query that brought them together. She was an optimist and an artist and an American. And she wrote Sherlock letters. The stack Joan had brought back from Hemdale must have been a dozen or more. She travelled a lot for her work, he’d said. They’d known each other less than a year before she was taken. Joan chewed her lip, calculating. Just a little longer than she’d known him, now that she thought about it. She didn’t know what to make of that. There was nothing to make of it.

In her mind she could hear Sherlock mouthing some crack about knowing in the biblical sense, although he’d never spoken of being with Irene the way he discussed his other sexual arrangements. Had they started off that way, transitioning from that first business meeting to one of his usual assignations? If so, what changed? What was it that Irene had said or done or been to transcend his otherwise purely utilitarian relationship to relationships? Joan wanted to stop thinking about it. It felt prurient, to speculate on their intimacies before tragedy struck, and she wanted to be a friend, not a voyeur. 

Still, in the hours of boredom on her own in hospital waiting rooms, she couldn’t help picking at the mystery under it all: who Irene had been to him, and how, and why. As she recovered, who she might become, to him and maybe to her. Perhaps there was something about that that Joan could use to help them find Moriarty. Who, she knew now, had to have been having the time of her life, watching them flounder and flop at her bedside.

In those few days at the hospital and the one that followed, Irene never said a single word to Joan.

Later, after Sherlock had left to take Irene into hiding, Joan wondered how long he would be able to put his work aside, tantamount to leaving himself behind. She’d never known him to do that for long, but then she didn’t know the person who came to say good bye, or what he was capable of sacrificing to make amends. She’d never met the man who fell in love with a mirage, only the one wrecked by it, afterwards. 

Moriarty’s last mistake, when she sat at Sherlock’s bedside thinking she’d wrecked him again, was to offer to put him back together herself. If they’d had no other plan in place that night, he’d never have abdicated all responsibility for himself like that. Even at his most self-loathing, he always wanted to take matters into his own hands.

*

Tonight, in the silent empty house where she was the woman left alone to scratch away in oblivion under Moriarty’s watchful eye, Joan thought again about real friends, the ones she’d lost, and the ones she never made. Never would make, now that her entire life was overshadowed by what happened when bad people realized where your weak spots were. If she could ever justify reaching out again under such circumstances, she no longer remembered how to do it.

At the advanced age of 45, she’d just about come to terms with her life, with Sherlock as her primary partner, and, though he’d never put it that way, she as his (Moriarty not withstanding). But their definitions of “primary” were not quite identical, nor were the needs each of them did and did not fill for the other. She hated to admit it, but he was much better at identifying and meeting his own needs than she’d ever been for herself. He was also annoyingly observant of her failings in this area, easily spotting when she wasn’t taking care of herself and rarely tactful in pointing it out.

She wished he were here to annoy her now. She wished she had someone to hold her hand.


	29. Detention Level (jwp 28)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When this is over, we’ll have a movie night."  
> 28 July prompt: [Bad, Bad, oh so Bad!](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1417751.html)  
> Reichenbach variation. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22-24, 26-27.  
> wordcount: 221b

The storm drain tunnel that was their route away from the transformer station was filled with debris piled up during Hurricane Sandy. Battered construction materials tangled with cables of all kinds, liberally salted with random plastic objects. It smelled mostly of wet rubber and rusted metal, thankfully; anything organic swept out by the floods had long since walked, crawled, or rotted away. It was entirely creepy and somehow familiar in a way Joan couldn’t put her finger on until she saw the ripple from a rat making its way under the looser drifts of garbage along the sides.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she drawled with a half smile as she clambered over the five-foot pile wedged across their path, giddy from adrenaline and their last-minute reunion. Sherlock just stared blankly at her over his shoulder. Star Wars apparently didn’t get a spot in the attic. “Never mind. When this is over, we’ll have a movie night. Alfredo and I will annoy you by reciting all the dialogue, and you’ll make disparaging remarks about inept security forces and the inaccuracy of sound effects in space.”

“Do you realize you’re babbling, Watson? You’re not making sense. And there is no sound in space.”

“My point exactly.” She grinned at him then, and he couldn’t help but smile back.


	30. Some Days You Get the Bear (jwp 29)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is a job for Snow Wolf.”  
> 29 July prompt: [Picture Prompt: Snow Wolf](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1422382.html) [picture of a wolf lying down in the snow]  
> Reichenbach variation. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22-24, 26-28.

They stood at the intersection of five other tunnels, two more than they’d expected based on the city plans Joan had managed to obtain. She was getting more comfortable creating personas to play in Everyone’s chat rooms, this time a grad student in the history of urban planning researching one of Robert Moses’ projects, in honor of the chaotic weekend when she first came to know what Everyone could do. Sherlock was attempting to smell their way out, and she was hanging back to avoid stirring the air. 

“This is a job for Snow Wolf,” she said under her breath, as if Oren were there to hear.

“Hmm?”

“Sorry, nothing. I was talking to myself.”

“You said, ‘this is a job for snow wolf.’ What is snow wolf?”

“It’s nothing; it’s _really_ not a thing. Forget it.” She gestured toward the tunnels, as if pushing him back to them.

“Watson, this is not the time to indulge lack of confidence. Any idea may be the spark that lights the most efficient path.”

Joan sighed with exasperation. “Fine. Snow Wolf is from a game Oren and I used to play. Something we made up to pass the time on long car rides.” She paused and then pushed her shoulders back. “My father’s psychiatric hospital was a two-hour drive away. Okay? It’s a make-believe character we pretended to have adventures with. Snow Wolf would know immediately which tunnel we should take.” Her shoulders hunched up again. "Like I said: not a thing."

“Ah,” he said in a neutral tone, processing the new information about her before acknowledging she was right with a tiny tilt of his head and swivelling on his heel to return to his task. She sat down on a piece of broken masonry and pulled out the folded-up plan again in case she’d overlooked a detail the last ninety-five times she looked at it.

“I had a bear,” he said a few minutes later.

“What?” For a second she thought he was saying there were bears in tunnels under the city. She knew black bears were found in suburbs nearby, but…

His back was to her, and his voice echoed slightly in the tunnels. “Mycroft and I never… That is, the age difference was too great. We played chess on occasion, by paternal decree. But when I was small, I conjured a companion. A bear. _Ursus Arctos_ , to be exact.” He took two long steps over to the entrance of the closest tunnel and squatted down to examine something on the ground. “I haven’t thought of her in a long time,” he said to his shoes. He brushed his hands together and straightened up with a clap. “So. Let’s ask them.”

“You mean…?” She was still grappling with absurdly cute mental images straight out of _Calvin and Hobbes_ cartoons.

“Snow Wolf and Ursus Arctos. We’ll ask them which tunnel to take and let our subconsciousness be our guide.” He appeared to be in earnest, and she let one side of her mouth drift up. As expected, he started to frown in response. “There are multiple studies showing that humans know things about their environment they don’t realize they know. These juvenile phantasms could provide us with the direction we seek.”

Her smile grew. “I think we can safely say that Moriarty would not predict this strategy. But I can’t wait to tell Marcus this was your idea.”

“It’s no different than other mental exercises I espouse. It was merely the first.” 

“I’m not making fun! Let’s try it. You want to see if we pick the same tunnel, right?”

“Correct. But we don’t want our conscious minds to influence the selection. Each tunnel corresponds to a finger.” He pointed to each in turn with the assigned digit. “We’ll close our eyes, and on the count of three hold up the finger for the tunnel we each feel we should take, and on the count of five, we’ll open our eyes.”

“Or…” She bent down to rummage in her pack and pulled out a scrap of paper and two pens. “Or we each write down a number and skip the part where we’re holding up our middle fingers with our eyes closed.” She tore the scrap in half and gave him one of the pieces and a pen.

Come on, Snow Wolf, she thought, and wrote down the number.


	31. Some Days the Bear Gets You (jwp 30)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What happened to it being better if you never saw me again?”  
> 30 July prompt: [Words of Warning]()  
> Reichenbach variation. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22-24, 26-29.

“Joan Watson.” The familiar voice came from the doorway behind her. She sounded amused, with the condescending tone she’d always used with Joan. “You’ve been keeping secrets.”

On the one hand, it was reassuring to have confirmation that some things — some people — never change. On the other, making any assumptions about this situation could lead to disaster. The laundromat was well lit but deserted, except for, Joan assumed, the goons now standing outside the fire exit in the back. She continued folding her clothes and didn’t turn around.

“What happened to it being better if you never saw me again?”

“Oh no, that’s not what I said. I would never wish for that. I suggested you’d be better off not coming to my attention again. Instead, you interfered with my local operation so brashly I can only assume you intended me to scold you for impertinence.”

“Why do you think that’s me, and not the police. or Interpol or whatever?” She rooted around in the basket to find a matching sock, willing her hands to stop shaking.

“It’s sad, really. I know you’re in mourning. Was it intended as homage? Or did you actually believe you could follow in his footsteps, unchaperoned?”

It rankled, even though everything depended upon Moriarty belittling her this way. She would not rise to the bait.


	32. Something Is Always Far Away (jwp 31)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watson didn't let go.  
> 31 July prompt: [Putting on a Show](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1431507.html)  
> Reichenbach variation. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22-24, 26-30. Y'all know what Reichenbach means, right? Do I need to say more? Did you check the tags?
> 
> [title from Rebecca Solnit](http://c--e-m.tumblr.com/post/124852927463), _A Field Guide to Getting Lost_

Despite all they’d done, Moriarty apparently remained unconvinced. Not absolutely certain he’d survived, but in the absence of definitive proof, she was skeptical, and worse, invested in confirmation. If anyone would know a murder could be faked, et cetera, et cetera. It appeared that time was the only force likely to move the game forward. Time and Watson, constantly exposing her flank to keep the enemy entertained and distracted.

The surveillance Holmes engaged in now was essentially at Moriarty’s discretion, which was maddening in the extreme: she intentionally created peep holes into her schedule to draw him out. Therefore he couldn’t take credit for having cracked her encryption or predicted her behavior. He could only take credit for holding back his impulse to jump into the fray. To not ruin everything with a premature tantrum.

Information on the obscenely wealthy git from whom she planned to extort untold millions this day was scarce; she’d been working through the ranks of multinational corporate leadership lately. He liked to think they’d soured her on political machinations as a route to financial gain when the Macedonian deal was kiboshed.

Today’s business was to take place while strolling along the Brooklyn Bridge. The crowds on the pedestrian level provided useful cover and plentiful targets for her security detail should a scene become necessary. Her methods to ensure cooperation remained constant and irritatingly effective: valuable hostages and corporate security infiltration. Shooting Proctor was the only documented occurrence of her taking matters into her own hands.

He watched their progress with a high-powered view scope set up inside an uninhabited half-finished condo tower locked in bankruptcy proceedings. It was something of an indulgence to follow her this way, although it was always possible some useful information could be gleaned when she felt confident she couldn’t be touched. It was, however, a bit dull, and he looked away on occasion to investigate the view, now darkened with heavy clouds and wind-churned river. A sudden squall had scattered the tourists when he checked back, leaving only determined commuters, a smattering of henchmen, and the tête à tête hunched against the downpour. Moriarty’s dupe appeared to be a woman this time, although the hooded raincoat made that identification difficult to confirm from his vantage point. 

They slowed as they approached a corner where the path widened, and he saw Moriarty place a hand on the other’s arm and resist the resulting shake-off. Curious. The other pulled harder, and then pushed back, bringing the security clods barreling in until Moriarty waved them back to their sullen corners. The mark started to walk away, but Moriarty grabbed her again, and this time there was a struggle. He watched in disbelief. What the hell was going on? 

He’d pulled his phone out to text the police when the woman’s hood blew back. He leapt up in shock, as if he could somehow reach them, and knocked the scope out of position. He swore as he tried to realign it with one hand and an elbow while thumbing through his contacts to get somebody in that bloody international security task force to respond. Before he could make a call he got them back in view and froze in horror: They both were somehow half off the railing. One of Moriarty’s men reached them and grabbed her coat, pulling back with a jerk. The force overbalanced her; her arms flailed as she tipped over. 

Watson didn’t let go, and then they were both out of view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> possibility221 painted the last moment of this chapter! Please take a look: [it's gorgeous!](http://possibility221.tumblr.com/post/137029230453/ive-been-meaning-to-do-this-watercolor-for-a)


	33. Ebb (amnesty 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During the surreal moments of her fall, Joan’s life did not flash before her eyes.  
> [amnesty prompt 1](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1437536.html): picture prompt: "Une fleur des montagnes!"  
>   
> Reichenbach variation. See also jwp 1, 5-9, 16-18, 22-24, 26-31.

During the surreal moments of her fall, Joan’s life did not flash before her eyes. Instead she had Sherlock nattering on about acceleration and force and angle of impact, like she’d never taken a physics class. It was almost comforting having him with her, until she slammed into the surface of the river.

Next were bright white bursts of pain, and a clamp of agony in her chest and throat as her body fought itself to expel the water in her lungs. She tried to brace her ribs, but only one of her arms worked, the other limp and bleeding. Something had happened before. Up there. Her mind shied away from remembering. She couldn’t feel the arm, small mercy when she didn’t know if the numbness was from severed nerves or hypothermia from the icy water. And then she realized she wasn’t in the water any more, with no recollection of how.

Pieces of the story gradually reassembled into memory. The last round of Morarity’s threats and a reluctant meeting. The demand to capitulate, her refusal, hard insistence. A struggle, then a moment of balance halfway between anchor and flight, like flowers in a cliff face, roots clinging to the barest hold on one side, petals straining for every measure of sun that reached them on the other. And then, when the power shifted, they fell.

More details filtered through the pain. Shoes and coat gone, no idea how or when. Moriarty pulling a knife to threaten her; scorn on her face. Then the unexpected: for all her hours with a scalpel in hand, she’d never before felt someone’s earnest intent to slice deep through skin and muscle. The shock, first of incredulity, and then pain. Wiped clean by the shock and pain magnitudes greater that came next. She felt the rumble of the boat’s motor shut off through the rough wood on the deck. The wound still wept, and she lay on her back feeling herself slip out like the tide. When she managed to screw open her eyes, all she saw was the dark stormy sky move above as the river flowed out to the sea.


	34. New Keys (amnesty 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was nothing to be nervous about. She could do this on her own.  
> [amnesty prompt 2](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1437536.html): Timestamp. Pick a story you wrote in a previous year's JWP and show what happened either just before or just after it.  
> Continues "[Stilled Keys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1813216/chapters/4109865)" just after season 2.

Joan took a deep breath as the station’s elevator reached the floor. It’d been almost a month since everything changed, but that didn’t matter. She was ready. There was nothing to be nervous about. She could do this on her own. As she walked down the hallway, it was reassuring that Major Crimes felt exactly the same. Marcus’s face lit up when he saw her, the best confidence boost she could have asked for.

“Joan, hey! I’ve been wondering about you the past couple of weeks. I figured Holmes must be back by now.” He looked past her, expectant, then confused. “Everything okay?”

She didn’t want to admit Sherlock just left. That there’d been no word from him this whole time. The closest thing was the call from Ms Hudson asking when would be convenient for her to come and shut up the brownstone. Marcus was quick and obviously realized Sherlock’s absence was a sore point, but only after the first few questions slipped through. And as much as she ached to release the pain of it, she was also damned if she would let another minute of her time be wasted on Sherlock Holmes. 

“Sorry, it’s just the last thing I expected, Holmes without Watson…” She gave a little shrug at his appraising look and kept her expression steady. “I’m just glad it’s not me on the receiving end of that. What’s he doing for MI6?” He suddenly frowned. “Does this mean you’ll be leaving us to move there too?”

“He’s working on something he can’t talk about. Top secret international intrigue, or so he keeps telling me.” She hesitated a bit too long and kicked herself, because he’d know she was lying. ”And uh, I already moved, but just to Chelsea. Chelsea, New York, that is.” She fished around in her pocket and pulled out her new business card. “Here, actually. What do you think?”

He looked at the card, and she knew he was filling in at least some of the blanks in her story, but she trusted him, and he didn’t let her down.

“Hey, look at that. ‘Watson Private Detective Service.’ I like it! As long as it means you’ll still have time for us?”

“That’s the plan. This to pay the bills,” she pointed to the card in his hand, “and as much time helping out over here as I can.”

“Good. All right.” He nodded. “And speaking of that, I’ve got this cartel case…”


	35. Hypothetical (amnesty 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...if only he could.  
> [amesty prompt 3](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1437536.html): Dubious chemistry  
>  related to "[Subtle Are the Links](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1813216/chapters/4213920)" and could possibly be an almost-prequel to beanarie's and my "[For Science](http://beanarie.tumblr.com/tagged/for-science)" series.  
> 100 words

Not that he would admit it to her, but Watson was quite right about the barrage of intrusive questions that followed the fake pregnancy he improvised for their case. It was extremely useful for getting their various suspects to blather on, but not even the timely performance of morning sickness was enough to cut off the chatter once they had what they needed. Perhaps he could concoct a mild purgative for verisimilitude… Or perhaps not, as he imagined what she’d tell him he could with it. Too bad; he would gladly take on the role instead, if only he could.


	36. On Your Sleeve (amnesty 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [amnesty prompt 4](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1437536.html): Another Year Older and Surrounded By Idiots: Incorporate a birthday observance in some way.  
>  100 words

When Joan came downstairs, a wrapped bouquet lay on the lock table, dark green paper around a dozen lush cream carnations.

Sherlock had obviously been waiting and immediately popped off the library couch to intercept her. “Before you say anything, I purchased them to bring myself; today’s selection at the bodega was rather limited. But if you’d rather I find something else or nothing at all…”

She sighed, unhappy with being so prickly about this, five years after Gerald died. Five birthdays he didn’t get to see. “No, they’re perfect. Thanks. But you don’t have to—“

“No. But I will.”


	37. So call me when you get where you're going (amnesty 5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This time last year I was surrounded by zombies.”  
> amnesty prompt 5: 5 + 5 = 1. The poll was something of a bust, between those who voted for all of them and a tie between 4 & 5\. I added a bit to 4 with amnesty #3, and this one is a new installment for the Continuing Adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson, set during last year's JWP road trip and inspired by meeting language-escapes today while on my current real-life road trip.

The traffic had come to a standstill an hour ago. After 20 minutes Joan had walked up the highway shoulder around the bend further up in search of an explanation but returned none the wiser. A steady breeze and the car doors open to catch it made the late afternoon sun bearable.

“This time last year I was surrounded by zombies.” Leonora had reclined the driver’s seat back as far as it would go, and spoke with one arm draped over her eyes.

“I’m not going to ask what brought that to mind.” Joan eyed the woods lining the highway. “But you can’t leave it there.”

“I got roped into stage managing a play. First time I’d done it since high school.”

“I didn’t know you did theatre. And by zombies, do you mean the characters or the actors?”

Leonora laughed. “No, the script did in fact call for zombies. But sometimes it was the crew in the mood to eat some brains… It was fun, and hard, and while I was doing it I was sure I never wanted to do it again. And then a few months passed and they asked me to do another one, and, well…”

“I wish you’d told us! Put me on the mailing list, I’d love to see your next one.” Joan looked behind them at the endless line of stopped cars. “Assuming we survive the night.”


	38. [No!] (amnesty 6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Her linguistic development is remarkable, in any case."  
> amnesty prompt 6: Down in the Mouth  
> A little something in the [For Science](http://beanarie.tumblr.com/tagged/for-science) universe

_I've moved this entry; it's now[chapter 12 of For Science](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5484440/chapters/17838874)._


	39. Pour Condoléance (amnesty 7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> amnesty prompt 7: Article Prompt: [Calling Cards](http://www.artofmanliness.com/2008/09/07/the-gentlemans-guide-to-the-calling-card/)  
> Reichenbach variation

Thankfully people seemed to assume Joan didn’t want to talk in the days after the service. Although the stress of pretending made a convincing grief-stricken facade, she didn’t trust her ability to lie about this to everyone’s faces. That guilt was compounded by superstitious dread that the lies would somehow become the truth. It was much easier to interact via texts and emails, where terseness would be interpreted as shock or sorrow or pain rather than subterfuge. 

Perhaps the formal social rituals of mourning would have provided additional camouflage, but nobody expected that of her. It was simpler just to hide, first in the brownstone until the day she came downstairs and found a small card slipped through the mail slot. She dropped it almost as soon as she’d picked it up. The left lower corner was folded up and p.c. written below the card owner’s ornately scripted name: Irene Adler.


End file.
